‘That black cloud came back, and for days after the NME humiliation I refused to speak to a soul, including Rasa. I sat in the kitchen in my parents’ house after refusing to go with the rest of the band to make a television appearance in Southampton. The official certificate, obtained by Grenville from a doctor ‘feel-good’ in Belgravia, stated that Raymond Douglas had gastroenteritis, but the reality was that I had the shits. I was shitting myself. I was shit scared. I didn’t give a shit.
Dad asked me why I refused to go.
‘Because I can’t win. There’s no point going if you can’t win. I can’t beat them. I don’t want to do any more publicity. I don’t want to pose for any more photographs. I want to get out of this rotten business. I don’t want to do it any more.’
Then, for the first time and only time my father hit me. He was literally shaking with rage, shouting something about not letting ‘them’ beat me. The sight of him standing there, tense with anger, made me feel ashamed of myself. I was still a product of the system that had given my parents a bad deal, and yet I was throwing away the only weapon with which I was able to fight back. I went to the pub for a drink with Dad, and we plotted how we would bring about the downfall of ‘them’. There was only one problem: I had no idea who ‘they’ were. Neither did Dad. But after three or four pints, neither of us gave a shit.
In real terms, the money was only just beginning to come in. Apart from the performing-rights royalties, the Kinks were earning good money at live concerts up and down the country. Wace had recently acquired a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, albeit secondhand. However, the chic Chelsea clubs where Robert was a member were making discreet inquiries, questioning whether he would be able to meet his bills in the future. Although it was never spoken of, this was also the case at his tailor in Savile Row. Both he and Grenville, when such mutterings were overheard, brushed the matter of a ‘flop’ single aside as a minor hiccup in our careers. As for me, I found myself spending more and more time locked away in my attic flat. Rasa’s tummy was getting bigger, and so I was also looking for larger accommodation. I took a modest ground-floor flat in Midhurst Avenue, Muswell Hill, at the rent of £7 10s. per week. All the Kinks were on a weekly wage of £40 before tax, and so there was enough money in the kitty to keep going.
Arthur Howes seemed to be the only person who believed the Kinks were still the best group in the country. He took us all for a Chinese meal to the place where he had discovered us little more than a year earlier.
‘You see, Raymond, my boy,’ he said, ‘what we need is that magic Kinks sound back. Dave’s chords going underneath. Nice melody and a chorus and Bob’s your uncle. You’ve got the act, you’ve got the audience, you simply have to deliver the goods and bingo! You’re special to me, you boys. You’ve got the new tour lined up and business looks like being better than ever. Just come up with a great record.’
R.D.’s impersonation of Arthur Howes was more than convincing. He continued talking as if still in the agent’s persona.
‘You see, me old fruit, I, Raymond Douglas, had suddenly found myself having to acquire the special art of what is described as Hackmanship: to contrive and target an audience rather than write from an inward, subconscious flow.
The recording of ‘Set Me Free’ made me feel like a whore; our managers, agents, record producers and publishers considered it to be one of the most commercial things I had written to date. The only consolation was the recording of the B-side. ‘I Need You’ was also contrived to sound like the Kinks of old, but at least it gave the band the opportunity of unleashing one of the finest intros to any track we ever recorded. Just before I counted in the song, Dave hit an angry crash chord which distorted and then started oscillating into feedback through his amplifier. Bob Auger, the engineer sitting next to Shel Talmy, was visibly shaken by the aggressive sound. In the studio it was as if the chord had jumped out past the sound barrier. It was only Bob’s brilliance as an engineer that managed to grab the fader on the console and pull it down so that the intro was usable. That chord more or less summed up the way the whole band felt about things at that particular time. Dave had been experimenting with feedback ever since the early rehearsals in our old front room, and often used it onstage. But this was the first time he’d used it on record.
When ‘Set Me Free’ entered the charts, Wace presumably ordered more suits from his tailor and put his car in for a much-needed service. Once again he felt free to run up large bills in all the fashionable clubs. Dave dressed as flamboyantly as ever, and was the darling of Carnaby Street. Mick dressed as flamboyantly as ever, and still looked like he had been given clothes that had been made for somebody else. Quaife had decided to become a fully fledged mod, and was frequently seen riding down Steeds Road council estate in his Lambretta. I, however, was not impressed by our success and remained in the flat in Midhurst Gardens. Thrift was the order of the day, as Rasa’s belly by now looked as though it was about to explode.
Even though there was renewed chart success, there was a growing distrust between the band and its various managements.
There was an American tour looming that summer, and both management factions were trying to out-do each other. Things were moving quickly, as if everybody wanted to work the Kinks while there was still a band to be worked. Perhaps their worst fears would come to pass and this was to be the last Kinks’ assault as a successful band.
The package tour of spring 1965 was cursed from the beginning. Brian Longstaff was unhappy with the way he was being treated and was talking about leaving. (The Kinks were also complaining about Brian’s donkey jacket, which he had been wearing since the first gigs at the Cavern.) But in many senses the group was starting to find itself among strangers. Longstaff was family, and he was leaving. That was a bad sign.
The Kinks were headlining the package tour, but we could hear whispers suggesting that this tour could be our last. There was no Hal Carter to encourage us and give us notes and corrections after each show, even though we never seemed to listen to him. The whole operation around us seemed to become very mercenary.
Dave and Mick had been quarrelling ever since Mum had arrived unannounced at the ‘house of sin’ that he and Mick had rented in Connaught Gardens, Muswell Hill. It had quickly become notorious for what our mother described as sex orgies. It was perhaps just a little decadent, and to be expected of two young men who found themselves in a situation where they could have almost any young girl in London. The only problem was that they tried to have them all at once. Mick’s bedroom had a sign on it: ‘Spunker’s Squalor’, and Dave’s room was christened ‘Whore’s Hovel’. The house had become home for every teenage girl and pop fan in the district, but the non-stop party came to an abrupt end when Mum entered the premises one morning to discover a so-called orgy in progress. Before she climbed the stairs towards ‘Whore’s Hovel’, my mother had cast some scantily clad girls into the street, like Jesus with the moneylenders. (And there was even a rumour that after Dave and Mick moved, the new tenants had the house exorcized by a priest before they moved their furniture in.) But the hard reality was that Dave and Mick were beginning to hate one another.
All in all, this was not the ideal situation in which to embark on a tour. The inevitable punch-ups began between Dave and Mick, climaxing in the famous incident at the Capital Theatre, Cardiff, where Mick tried to slice Dave’s head off with a cymbal during ‘Beautiful Delilah’. Mick went into hiding for a couple of weeks. The police wanted to arrest him for grievous bodily harm with intent to kill, but fortunately Dave wouldn’t press charges. For a while we thought that Mick and Dave could never work together again, and we even reached the point of rehearsing with a new drummer, Mitch Mitchell, whom we’d known from a support band called the Riot Squad. (Mitchell later went on to join Jimi Hendrix.) Finally one way or another Mick and Dave were reconciled, but everyone was walking on thin ice – and we all knew it.
Dave had been hanging around with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, and as a result started mixing drink and drugs. Everybody was relieved when, after several run-ins with the police and punch-ups outside clubs, he returned to live with Mum and Dad. With Dad around we had only the drink to worry about.
On 23 May I woke to find Rasa in some distress: the baby had started to arrive. An ambulance was summoned and Rasa was taken to a clinic in Muswell Hill where I was told by the matron to go home and wait by the telephone. Although the sixties were supposed to be the age of liberation, this particular clinic felt that when it came to childbirth it was better to remain in the Victorian era; Rasa, coming from a Roman Catholic background, probably felt it was a woman’s right to suffer alone. As I waited in the front room of my parents’ house, I started tinkering on the piano. Two hours went past and there was still no news. I had developed a tune and was now writing the words. I had just finished the lyrics to ‘I Go to Sleep’ when the telephone rang: Rasa had given birth to a baby girl.’
R.D. paused and put a cassette in the machine. It was ‘I Go to Sleep’, sung by Peggy Lee. I looked at the little pile of clippings I had taken from the attic and saw a photograph of R.D. and Rasa holding up the newborn baby. Underneath was written in R.D.’s handwriting: ‘When I look up from my pillow, I dream you are there with me.’ Then: ‘A new life is born and an old love begins to die.’
There were random words scribbled on the cuttings: Pram. Nappies. Urine. Sleepless nights. Milk-stained brassieres. Baby doo. Loving in-laws. Proud relatives. Happy snaps. The American tour starts next week.
I showed R.D. the photograph, which made him smile. He sat up.
‘It all seems like sunlight, sunlight, but from the day Louisa was born until the day we had to take off for America, it was a crazy, thoughtless time. The night before we left, the door to our apartment fell off its hinges because the frame had dry rot. There was also damp in the kitchen. I didn’t want to leave them in this situation, but my dad said he would take care of them and fix up the flat while I was away. There was just enough time to kiss Louisa and Rasa goodbye and run out of the apartment, leaving them without a front door and with mushrooms growing underneath the kitchen sink. I promised that when I returned from America, I’d find us a house to live in with more space and in better shape. With mushrooms that grew in the garden rather than on the floor.’
Raymond Douglas paused.
‘I find it really difficult to go on.’
‘How come?’
‘I didn’t want to leave – I was just beginning to enjoy being a family man, but America always reared its head like a huge serpent and snapped me back.’
‘But why don’t you want to talk about America?’
‘Because I know that everybody wants to know what went on, but it was no worse than anything any other band did. All sorts of ridiculous stories evolve when musicians get old and fragile and their memories don’t function. They imagine horrors that weren’t there and beauty that never existed. You see, it’s what the world expects. The public demands us to live out their fantasies, but I swear that given the circumstances I was as faithful as I could have been to my wife. And the circumstances were that I just didn’t want to be there at all. What sort of crap do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to say that when we got to America we stayed at this big, swanky hotel, and there was a chick sucking my dick for a whole day – and that I even did a telephone interview during it? Would you think that was the truth or a lie? It doesn’t matter because you expect it. People get old and their brains start to go. They tend to elaborate. I do know that we played a theatre called the New York Music Center with the Dave Clark Five again, but obviously our situation had changed from the last time we played together. We had kids jumping on our car wherever we went and we were locked in our hotel rooms for our own safety – although when some redneck came up to me on the street and said, ‘Are you a Beatle or a girl?’ I just said I was a queer. After our so-called triumph in New York we went on to Philadelphia to play a huge arena. This time with the Supremes. I remember them singing ‘Baby Love’ and thinking that it was one of Rasa’s favourite tunes. We were just a bunch of unhappy, scruffy, unprofessional louts who shouldn’t have been allowed to upstage real professionals. But whenever we went on stage all we could hear was the deafening roar of kids screaming. Before the tour, it had been decided by the management that Larry Page should accompany us to America. It was unclear to me how this decision was reached. Perhaps I had been too preoccupied. My new status as a family man meant I had not focused clearly on the power-games being played within the Kinks management.
In order to give himself more stature, Larry had taken to wearing an admiral’s hat. I think he admired Colonel Tom Parker, who managed Elvis Presley, and must have thought that all managers should be bigger personalities than their artists. Larry didn’t need a big hat. His character was large enough. Our new road manager introduced himself to us as ‘Samuel Ben-Hitchcock Halevy’, and he was a veteran from the days of the Shadows and Tommy Steele. Brian Longstaff had quit and with him our last contact with the original team had been severed. Because Brian was an in-law, he could always step in when Dave and I got out of control, but now everything felt dangerous and tense.
America. Guns. Seeing Kennedy killed on TV a few years before had made me think that the whole continent was full of assassins, serial-killers and Mob-style corporations. I had started playing music because it was the only way I could express myself as an individual, and yet America, the country that had always inspired that sense of freedom inside me, was somehow one of the most repressed, backward-thinking places I had ever been to. I suppose I was naïve, but I had to learn that freedom doesn’t mean going west on a wagon train, with John Wayne there to see that nobody comes to harm. Freedom contains a lot of danger, and it can only be achieved after a struggle. There we were in the middle of America. Milkshakes and hamburgers. Cookies and hot dogs. The American dream, and yet I felt that the whole country was trying to cover up something that was going bad from the inside. It’s strange that so many American heroes die so young. Perhaps conservative America can’t face that idealism. The reality was that beneath the ice-cream-parlour image, there was a festering pool of garbage. When waitresses in restaurants said ‘Have a good day’, I somehow felt that they were either administering the last rites or warning me that if I fucked up, I would get shot.
I arrived at my hotel room in Philadelphia after the show to find a pretty blonde girl sitting on my bed. We talked for a while, then I asked her how old she was. Almost as I spoke, and before she could respond, there was a knock at the door.
‘I’m fourteen,’ she said as she smiled and fluttered her false eyelashes, patting her heavily lacquered beehive hairdo.
As I shouted ‘Who’s that?’ I thought about the rigid laws in the States about sex with minors.
‘That’s probably my daddy,’ she said. ‘He’s the local sheriff.’
Fortunately Larry – or should I say the admiral – was at hand to extricate me from what could have been a disastrous situation. Even today I can’t help feeling that it was a set-up. Maybe it’s my paranoia, but I felt that somebody, somewhere, was still out to get one of the Kinks.
The next day we took an early flight, then a coach, to St Louis, to Springfield, then on. I found myself in the back of a big Thunderbird with some slick-looking dude who looked like he had walked out of a Jack Kerouac novel; a punk from your typical B-movie, the one who would inevitably piss somebody off before Lee Marvin put a bullet through his brain. The punk had the first car telephone I had ever seen.
The punk turned towards me. ‘Kinks? What kind of motherfucking name is that? I’ve got Elvis Presley’s phone number. I’ve fucked Ann-Margret, too. I mean, she wasn’t Ann-Margret. She probably just said that to get into a show – or into my pants.’
He picked up the phone and dialled a number.
‘Hi, is Elvis there? Is that you, Elvis? Well, let me speak to the Colonel. Jump to it, you motherfucker, who the fuck do you think you are?’
He slammed down the phone and reached in the glove-compartment. He produced a pistol.
‘These people shouldn’t piss me off, ’cause when they deal with me, they treat me right, otherwise they deal with this.’ He waved the pistol around menacingly before putting it down on the seat beside him. Then his mood shifted, he smiled a film-star’s toothy smile and said, ‘Welcome to Illinois, the home of middle America.’
When I reached my hotel room, I made sure the door was locked and I didn’t leave until it was time to go onstage. I wanted to go home. I telephoned Rasa at my parents’ house, but the sound of her sad little voice at the other end of the crackling line turned this occasion into a very emotional experience. I asked Sam what I should do. His reply was simple: ‘Don’t phone.’
‘Baby Love’. Great song. Fantastic record. Sexy group. Rotten emotion.
Whoever the pistol-packing punk driver from Illinois was, he certainly had a substantial amount of rock ’n’ roll taste. He had arranged for our promoter to book as our opening act a classic band from the first wave of rock music in America, the Hollywood Argyles. Their big hit had been a song called ‘Alley Oop’. D’you know the song? ‘Alley oop, oop, oop, oopoop’. They had this weird lead singer who looked like a Hawaiian version of James Brown and a curvaceous back-up singer who turned out to be the lead singer’s wife. I knew the song but thought that the band had disappeared years before, into the backwaters of clubs and nowhere bar-gigs on the second-string circuit, lost in the heartlands of America. Singing the same hits every night. Pure bread-and-butter time.
I looked at the punk and wondered whether he was an angel, cast out of heaven for listening to the devil’s music, all back-beat and thump. He certainly exuded that indefinable bullshit-like quality that epitomized the American redneck element. In other words, he scared the shit out of me and fascinated me all at once. It made me realize how close together life and death really are, and how we should appreciate the bit of life that exists in between. As the punk driver watched me watching the Hollywood Argyles, I didn’t know whether his head was moving up and down in time to the rhythm of the music or whether he was counting down the moments when he could put a bullet through my head.
After the show we were taken to a cheap motel where we could rest up before leaving early in the morning for Nevada. The pistol-packing pig-nose punk driver had pissed off and, hopefully, his boss had paid Larry our fee before leaving. I was just nodding off to sleep, contemplating whether or not to phone home, when my door burst open. I was relieved to see that it was only a slightly drunk musician from one of the support groups. He was easy to recognize because he was still wearing his cabaret band suit. He was younger than the rest of the group, maybe in his late twenties. He drawled on about how much he loved the Kinks and the Beatles and how he had just missed out on the scene. Caught between generations and all that.
He asked me if he could borrow my telephone. I said that was no problem provided the telephone stayed plugged into the socket beside my bed.
‘My wife will go out of her mind when she finds out that I’m in Ray Davies’ bedroom.’
I didn’t know quite how to respond.
He dialled a number, somewhere in Virginia, he said. His voice became raised.
‘Hi, baby, guess where I am. No, I’m not with a woman, but he sure has long hair.’ His voice got even louder and more staccato.
‘I’m in the bedroom of the one and only Ray of the Kinks, from England. That’s right. The goddamn limey Kinks and the most shit-kicking bunch of good ol’ boys that you could ever meet.’
He shouted even louder, almost angrily. I was sitting on the bed with my legs apart, he was on his knees in front of me. As he shouted he lifted his arm and came down on my balls with his fist.
‘I mean these guys are Reet-suckin’-Petite. And, baby, when I get home I’m gonna suck you all over. Love you, honey.’
He gently replaced the receiver. He looked up at me and stared in my eyes, I swear I could see tears. The guy had obviously been on the road for a long time, day after day on the bread-and-butter circuit. I tried to think of something kind to say because I sensed from him a feeling of genuine awe and also resentment, all combined together. I realized how lucky I was, and I swore to myself that I would never get like him: playing date after date in nowhere towns at nickel-and-dime gigs. I knew that he hadn’t meant to punch me in the knackers, that it was probably a remembrance of some cheap manager somewhere who had chisled him out of stardom that had prompted the action.
I tried to lighten the load the guy was carrying by making some reference to my own home. ‘I was just about to phone my missus when you walked in,’ I said somewhat stupidly.
He stared at me for a few seconds, obviously only half understanding what I had said. I suspect his thoughts were with the woman who had been on the other end of the phone. Was she really his baby, or an estranged wife? He got up to leave, paused by the door and looked up at the starry sky.
‘Where the hell are we? These motels all look the same. See ya, buddy.’
I never saw him again, but I will always remember him, partly because my balls hurt for two weeks afterwards. And even if Brigitte Bardot had offered her services that night I would have had to decline.
The American landscape was beginning to take on a totally different look to the one I had experienced through movies and television. Sure there were men who talked like John Wayne and Marlon Brando. Sure there were some outrageous characters with all the movie-star trappings. But there was also an entire nation of unhappy drifters who had not been part of the American dream. Even so, the six-and-a-half-hour flight from London was culturally as if I had taken a space trip from Muswell Hill to Mars.
I wiped my feet on the mat which said ‘Have a good day’, as I entered the motel coffee shop for an early breakfast. I was greeted by the sight of Eddie Kassner, already sitting at the breakfast table with what must have been his kids. He stood up and hugged me.
‘Raymond, my boy, I’ve been following you all across America.’ He held me in a squeeze as tight as a vice. ‘I’m not gonna let my boy get away from me. You’re like my family. And here we all are together.’
He turned and gestured towards the table where his family were sitting. Before our second album had come out, Grenville and Robert had said that they were concerned about Larry and Eddie. I was just interested in making sure that I got my royalties, but our success had been so quick and tumultuous that it was only nine months since our first Number I – hardly time for the first royalty cheques to arrive. Eddie squeezed me again. Now, Eddie was following his ‘boy’ across America. I wondered why, unless he was receiving part of the commission from our live concerts. This, combined with the publishing, would have been in anybody’s language, a hell of a payday. After playing the Midwest we moved on to Nevada and, in true cartoon-chase fashion, wherever we travelled, Eddie Kassner was somewhere on the horizon keeping us in his sights. It was reassuring to know he was out there.
Reno. Neon lights. Big-titted women. Big hair-dos. Nicotine-stained fingers putting quarters into slot machines, rolling a dice in the quest for that elusive big win. More of the American dream.
‘We could all divorce our wives here,’ Sam Levy commented. ‘And they have the best prostitutes in America. Clean, professional and they never spill a drop.’
‘A drop of what?’
Sam just smiled and walked on. I didn’t even want to think about what he was thinking about. It turned out that Sam was right, though.
I shared a room with Dave, who wasn’t drinking so much, but like me he felt a little intimidated by it all. He was eighteen years old. We had been moving so fast that we still hadn’t recovered from jet-lag. I’d just nodded off to sleep when the telephone rang. I got to the receiver first and a young male voice sounded through the cracking long-distance wire.
‘Hello, dear, David, it’s Michael Aldred. I miss you, mate.’
Michael had been the announcer on Ready Steady Go! when the Kinks had first appeared singing ‘Long Tall Sally’. I explained that he was speaking to the wrong person and handed the phone over to my brother, who had what must have been a half-hour conversation. I was relieved that Dave had a close friend to confide in.
Michael had become such a regular visitor to Dave and Mick’s notorious house in Connaught Gardens that at one point he had almost seemed to be the in-house servant, cooking the breakfast and washing the smalls, looking through keyholes and listening at walls. The things people do in the name of friendship.
The time arrived for us to go to the gig, at a basketball arena in downtown Reno. Eddie Kassner was waiting for me in the foyer of the hotel to drive me to the concert. I mean, here I am in Reno, Nevada, and there’s Eddie Kassner, my music publisher, chauffeuring me to the concert. Eddie gave one of his familiar, sinister smiles. It was so uncharacteristic, so false, almost as if he had learned to smile from a do-it-yourself help book.
‘I’m here to watch my boy Raymond, so that nobody can take advantage of you.’ The smile was still on his lips. It must have made it difficult to talk. ‘In places like this a nice-looking kid like you can be led astray.’
I just sat there. I looked out to bright neon lights of downtown Reno and longed to be led astray out there by people who only wanted me to lose money on blackjack or roulette, but there I was in Eddie’s car, and that smile was still on his face, fixed like it was under remote-control. I thought back to Eddie’s description of his life during the war and deduced that after such suffering he must have struggled hard to develop a grin, let alone a smile. The doors of the car locked automatically. I was trapped. Inside and out.
The dressing-rooms at Reno looked the same as many others, but as the Kinks ran on to do their performance, we realized to our surprise that the stage was not in a basketball arena at all, but slap-bang in the middle of an ice-rink. The promoter had just plonked down a little square stage, about fifty yards away from the nearest person in the audience. In fact it was not possible to have any contact with the audience at all. The acoustics were atrocious. After two or three songs I’d had enough and I shouted for the audience to come closer to the stage, which they did as there were no bouncers around to keep them in their seats. The remainder of the concert was a riotous success, but the promoter took exception to the manner of our performance and even accused us of using bad language from the stage, which would corrupt the young and impressionable audience and incite them to riot.
We got out of Reno and went on to California, which wasn’t any better. We played Sacramento supported by Sonny and Cher, a husband and wife act who had just released a single called ‘I Got You, Babe’. The group literally oozed over Cher as they watched her from behind. Her long black hair hung down past her ass, which was just visible as it wiggled in a skin-tight pair of pants. Then she turned round and Mick exclaimed that both Cher and Sonny needed nose jobs. I mean, the Kinks all had fair old salmons, but according to Mick the two should have contacted a plastic surgeon. Particularly the bloke, who reminded me of Barry Fantoni, a friend from Croydon Art College. The surfer duo Jan and Dean were hanging around at this time, and they became good friends of Dave’s. They were in many ways responsible for the authentic West Coast surf sound, even though the Beach Boys later claimed that music as their own.
After the Sacramento concert we found ourselves in chauffeur-driven limousines for a triumphal entry into the city of Los Angeles. The staff at the Roosevelt Hotel took one look at us and said that our reservations had not been confirmed. We were driven a little less triumphantly away in the same limousines to the Ambassador Hotel, where it was possible to purchase the status which would enable the group to have a hotel room confirmed immediately. In other words, we had to buy our way into the hotel, thereby learning an important American phrase not yet common in our native country: ‘Money talks’. The question that hadn’t been raised yet was whose money was talking, and, more to the point, who was spending it?
Whatever. This was America and everybody said welcome to America. Mick said they were welcome to it.
In Los Angeles, we performed on the Shindig show, which was the West Coast equivalent of Hullabaloo, and it was there that Dave and I played on a session with one of our great guitar heroes – Jimmy Burton.
James Burton had been responsible for some of the great rock ’n’ roll solos of the fifties and early sixties on Ricky Nelson and Elvis Presley records, plus those of numerous other country-blues artists. His bending, twanging guitar technique was copied by Dave, Jimmy Page and many other English guitarists. He substituted the third G-string with a B-string, which was lighter gauge. It gave the guitar a special twanging quality. In many ways he was an indirect influence on the sound Dave had achieved on ‘You Really Got Me’.
Shindig was one of those wild extravaganzas with whooping cheerleader-type dancers behind us as we performed our three songs: ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘All Day and All of the Night’ and ‘Tired of Waiting for You’. ‘Set Me Free’ had also been released at this point, and we were promoting that heavily. Other performers on the show were Marianne Faithfull, Jan and Dean, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Aretha Franklin. To this day I have a vivid memory of Aretha at the end of her song hitting one of the highest notes I’ve ever heard from a human being. It sort of reminded me of the way Mum shouted when Dave and I did something wrong. Sonny and Cher were also riding high, and they were on the show. Cher, in particular, came to watch the Kinks. Up close, her nose didn’t look bad at all. In fact she was tasty. She was concerned at how worried I looked on camera and how much I was frowning. She pushed my brow down, smoothed out my skin and said, ‘You don’t want to look like a forty-year-old by the time you’re twenty-one.’ It’s ironic to look back on Cher’s career and realize that she would make a successful life for herself as a young-looking forty-something.
All the songs we performed were with back-tracks, that is, with pre-recorded instruments and vocals. Because of this we had to sign a form which made us members of the AFTRA Union. The back-track was done in a studio in Hollywood with James Burton playing a supporting role of rhythm guitar to Dave’s chug-chug solo on ‘Long Tall Shorty’. It was truly amazing to have such a great legend playing as a sideman.
Later, after one of the rehearsals at the TV studio, I was invited by one of the female dancers to go and see the sights of Hollywood. This appealed to me, as she was not just attractive but also an outward person who recognized my shyness. She also offered her services as chauffeur in her small sports car. This girl, whose name now eludes me, took me to drive-in movies and drive-in hamburger joints, where I had the first malted milkshake of my life. Since then, malted milkshakes have become an essential part of Raymond Douglas Davies’ life. On later tours, I scoured the streets after every show in search of the perfect malted. I have a top ten list of the best milkshakes in America. The number I slot is currently held by Binghamton, in the state of New York. As it’s unlikely that I will ever tour again, this record will stand in perpetuity.
Anyway, back to my LA babe. After the tour of Hollywood she took me back to her apartment in the hills. It was not a romantic event, but obviously there was some sort of physical tension between us. Perhaps it was the way her blouse had come undone at the top, which exposed her right nipple. This was not intentional on her part, and I had seen my fair share of nipples by now. But the fact that she was not wearing a bra at all was a turn on. It must be understood that this was way before women’s lib and the whole burn-the-bra thing. This girl was just fantastically naturally rude, in the most dignified, puritanical American way. She kissed me gently on the cheek as we danced. Then she put on a record and I recognized the guitar playing. I said, ‘Is that James Burton?’ and she said, ‘Yes, that’s James. He’s a friend of mine.’ I looked over to the corner of the room and saw a fender Stratocaster resting against a settee. Surely this dancer from Shindig didn’t play a Strat? Shock! Horror! Had I been out for the night with my idol’s girlfriend? To this day I don’t know whether this was a fact, but I’d like to believe that it was. I left the girl honourably, got a taxi straight back to the Ambassador Hotel and never said anything to Mr Burton for fear of becoming an enemy for life. But I like to think that Mr Burton, being the cool dude I expected him to be, would have just smiled and told me to go home and practise my scales. I saw in him something of the old cowboy that I’d admired in all those Westerns I’d loved as a kid, and I could tell by his guitar playing that the man was a good guy. Just the same, I didn’t want to take the chance and get caught with the gal. Thinking back, though, I suspect she just said that to freak me out. Of course she knew James. They worked on the same show. And who’s to say that a girl can’t play a Stratocaster? Still I wonder about it sometimes. Whatever, the evening of milkshakes and drive-ins was a welcome break away from the scrutiny of the record company and Eddie Kassner. By this time I had become totally paranoid: I was suspicious because our limousines were chauffeured by sharp-looking drivers in black suits and dark glasses, with their hair greased back. Echoes of Illinois, paranoia. At the Ambassador Hotel we were given bungalows away from the main building. I decided that this was so that we wouldn’t embarrass the other patrons.
By now, I was totally wound up, and also nervous about the upcoming concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I was determined to confront Larry Page because I felt that the tour had been run in a very shoddy manner. We were just thrown on in any venue that would pay the money, and no thought was given to the group’s performance. It was not necessarily Larry’s fault, but he was the only one we were allowed to complain to. I turned on the television to see Larry being interviewed as the Kinks’ manager and commander, the admiral’s hat still firmly in place. He looked a complete prat, but what really annoyed me was that he was talking as if he had invented the Kinks.
When I reached Larry’s bungalow I burst in full of rage, demanding that my wife be flown out to me. I saw Larry standing down the end of the hallway to his room. I had just completed the first sentence when I looked over to the bed and saw Sam lying with his underpants down while a naked girl licked his undercarriage. Sam liked girls to kiss his ass. He looked like a sultan being serviced by one of his concubines. What amazed me was that the girl never even stopped to look up to see who the intruder was. Larry stood in an adjoining room making a long-distance telephone call, trying to ignore Sam and the girl, who were reflected in a mirror hanging in the hall between the two rooms. I wanted Rasa flown out because I felt really insecure and threatened by the whole setup. Larry calmed me down by saying that he had been trying to organize this, but I felt he was just stroking me in his usual manner, because he knew full well that I wouldn’t walk out on a commitment.
I knew it would all boil up inside and erupt sooner or later. And it did. I think it was backstage at one of those other TV programmes where they packaged as many beat groups together as possible in order to cash in on the English invasion before the bubble burst. Fun and innocence on TV, a total meat market backstage. Some guy who said he worked for the TV company walked up and accused us of being late. Then he started making anti-British comments. Things like ‘Just because the Beatles did it, every mop-topped, spotty-faced limey juvenile thinks he can come over here and make a career for himself.’ He also called me ‘A talentless fuck who was in the right place at the right time.’ The usual schlock.
I said something about American pop music being so dull and syrupy before the British invasion. I think it was the word ‘invasion’ that did it. Invasion. As if nobody were allowed to invade America. The guy exploded. I think he even mentioned Pearl Harbor, then he went on to the British socialist government, and we were all nothing more than a bunch of pinkos. Then he uttered the fatal words:
‘You’re just a bunch of Commie wimps. When the Russians take over Britain, don’t expect us to come over and save you this time. The Kinks, huh? Well, once I file my report on you guys, you’ll never work in the USA again. You’re gonna find out just how powerful America is, you limey bastard!’
The rest is a blur. However, I do recall being pushed and swinging a punch and being punched back. I stormed out of the building, leaving an assorted number of confused groups, like the Zombies and Herman’s Hermits, and some American Beatle clones, looking shocked and dismayed.
I went back to my bungalow and barricaded the door with furniture so that nobody could get in. That aggressive sod, whoever he was, had put anger and fear inside me, even though for once I felt proud of being British. We were not wimps who just stood around and let people treat us like shit. In my confused state of shock, I even imagined that the powers-that-be, the unions, showbiz insiders, whoever, were so pissed off that the Beatles had taken away so much earning power from the American bands that they were looking for any excuse to make an example of someone. They couldn’t do it with music any more, so they resorted to cheap mob-style tactics. Suddenly I remembered the image of Lee Harvey Oswald appearing in front of a camera saying that he was a patsy. I decided that everybody was part of a gigantic conspiracy. The Cosa Nostra were everywhere. Why not? That was part of America, the same as ice-cream and apple pie. Guns. The Wild West. What a load of fascist bullshit.
The Kinks were distributed on Reprise Records, a company which had been set up through Warner Brothers. We were impressed to be on the same label as Frank Sinatra. But Reprise was based in LA and nothing was real there. Where were the real people, I thought as I barricaded myself inside my bungalow. Everywhere I went I saw Eddie Kassner, Larry Page, greaseball limo drivers, anger, fury and a gun in every glove compartment. There was talk of union problems, lawsuits. I had just had enough. This was more than just musical expression and all that. This was political.
Somehow the message got through to London and Grenville arranged to have Rasa and Quaife’s girlfriend Nicola flown out as soon as possible. Everybody wanted to drain the last drop of juice out of the Kinks while there was still enough to go around. If this meant giving the spoiled upstarts what they wanted for the time being, then it was a small price to pay. It was something I’d see repeated again and again: suffer an artist any indulgence in order that he performs. So, late on a hot summer’s night Quaife and I found ourselves at Los Angeles airport looking for Rasa and Nicki. We were uncertain whether Nicki had made the trip since she was underage and needed her father to sign a consent form to get a passport. Nicki’s parents had separated years before. Grenville had had to track down her father. He eventually was found and, according to Grenville, living in quite affluent splendour in the country. Rasa had different problems obtaining a visa to the USA. She was still a stateless person, and had to make a special application to obtain a temporary passport to leave the UK. To add to the confusion, an over-excited bureaucrat at the American Embassy had decided Rasa was a Communist because her parents had come from Lithuania, then part of the USSR, and Rasa’s father had served in both the Soviet and German armies. Nobody told the Embassy that the poor old boy had no choice. However, all the formalities had been sorted out in time for the two girls to jump on a plane to New York and then change flights for LA. The first time round the airport, there was no sign of either of them. After going round once more for luck, we spotted Rasa’s long blonde hair as she bent down to pick up her suitcase. Nicola was much taller and more elegant and she posed outside the terminal as if she were modelling the latest design from one of the Parisian fashion houses: Mary Quant bob-style hair, miniskirt and long slender legs.
The girls’ arrival came as a great relief to our management, agency and publishers alike, as the next concert was to be at the prestigious Hollywood Bowl where we were playing with the Righteous Brothers, Sonny and Cher, the Byrds, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and the Beach Boys. Everyone was very aware that our performance, both on and off stage, would be closely scrutinized by the powers-that-be. Whoever they were.’
R.D. rubbed his hands together nervously. He looked over at me as if he needed my approval. I felt he was beginning to trust me enough to reveal his weaknesses.
‘You see, you don’t understand what it’s like being thrown right in there with all these great groups. I’m not given to nostalgia, but that concert gave me such a buzz because I enjoyed the records that those other groups had made. One of those gentlemen in a dark suit and sunglasses drove Rasa and me up that impressive canyon in a limousine to the backstage of the Hollywood Bowl for the afternoon sound-check. In the distance we heard the Righteous Brothers accompanied by a full orchestra singing the opening lines to ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’. Later that evening as we made the same journey to the concert itself, we got out of the same limo and heard a deafening roar from the crowd as the opening chords to the Byrds version of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ echoed around the canyon. A priceless, vibrant moment. I think I even got a hard on of sorts.
Backstage I discovered a very different situation. It was pandemonium everywhere. The Pharaohs, without Sam the Sham, were dressed in their Arabian stage gear and arguing about some of the fuck-ups they’d made during their performance. Mick was dragged outside by one of the promotion men from Reprise Records because that was a rumour that Dean Martin, whom Mick had met in a studio a day earlier, had arrived on a motorbike in full Beverly Hills-style bikers’ leather. I wanted to know if Jerry Lewis was there too, but I was disappointed to see that Dean had arrived without the other half of his old comedy team. Instead, he was accompanied by his son and a few friends who had formed a group called ‘Dino, Desi and Billy’. Mike Love, the lead singer of the Beach Boys, strutted up to me, stared me out for a few seconds, made a gesture as if to say hello and then walked straight past. Dave tried to talk to another member of the Beach Boys, but for some strange reason, he received the same freeze-out I had. This could have been nerves on their part, or even professional jealousy, as we had by now earned a reputation for being somewhat rowdy, on and off stage, and we were the only Brits on the show and part of the dreaded ‘invasion’ to boot. Meanwhile, onstage, while Cher sang a reprise of ‘I’ve Got You, Babe’, Sonny Bono was winding up the audience by jumping in the water moat that separated the performers from the crowd. This didn’t bother us too much, as by now we were accustomed to opening acts trying to upstage us. We had developed a modicum of professionalism sufficient to see us through any performance. The truth was that the Kinks revelled in rivalry and competitiveness: it just made us play harder and move more aggressively, as if a gauntlet had been thrown down by the other acts on the bill. It was similar to being a prize-fighter who had become the Champion of the World, only to discover that every smalltime punk wanted to pick a fight with him. Just the same, Dave and I were particularly upset by the apparent lack of grace shown to us by the Beach Boys, because we had been genuine fans of most of their records.
After the concert we breezed past assorted celebrities that had assembled backstage. The Pharaohs, still without Sam the Sham, were strutting up and down the corridor arguing over wrong chord changes. Sonny and Cher were holding court somewhere: ‘I Got You, Babe’ was on the verge of becoming a huge hit all over the world. Although somewhat miffed by the lack of attention we received after our triumph at the Hollywood Bowl, something must have paid off. When Sonny and Cher later recorded an album in London, ‘I Go to Sleep’ was among the tracks. Before the tour I had gone to a small studio in Denmark Street and made a very rough demo of the song, which I had sent to Peggy Lee. Maybe Kassner had driven around America with it. Maybe that’s why he had been smiling.
Although there were undercurrents of friction between the promoters and the Kinks management, there was never anything said directly to us. It wasn’t until the next concert, at the Cow Palace Auditorium in San Francisco, that the first definitive signs appeared that all was not well. We had been billed to appear with the same package, but for some reason the promoter refused to let us perform. So as not to disappoint the Kinks fans we decided to show our faces to the audience. I muttered some words down the microphone to the effect that we wanted to play, but the promoter wouldn’t let us. This resulted in the PA system being switched off and the Kinks being bustled out of the backstage entrance into waiting limousines, which took us straight to San Francisco airport.
Dave had bought a beautiful Gretsch guitar that had once been owned by George Harrison (and a photo of Dave playing it had been taken and eventually used on the cover of Kinks Kontroversy). At the check-in Dave put it down and looked away for a moment. When he turned back he found it had been stolen. It seemed symbolic somehow.
To this day I don’t know what the hell was going down. Larry suddenly disappeared, leaving us with some Californian businessman whose name I can’t recall. Even Eddie was no longer in pursuit. We flew down from Frisco to LA and stayed at a cheap motel off La Cienaga accompanied by Sam Levy and the wealthy businessman. Next morning we were hustled on to a plane to Hawaii. When we asked where Larry had gone, they brushed our inquiries aside, simply saying that he had had to go somewhere on business. I was with Rasa, and even though I was pissed at my management for walking out on us, I was overjoyed to be in her company. Her presence somehow made my feeling of betrayal seem trivial. We got off the plane at Hawaii airport and heard the sound of screaming Hawaiian teenagers – and that was when Sam and the businessman got off the plane. When the Kinks emerged there was total uproar. Sam, being no shrinking violet, walked on ahead as a committee of Hula-Hula girls approached him. They sang a Hawaiian song of welcome and then the leader of the little troupe walked up to Sam, put a garland of plastic flowers around his neck and kissed him on both cheeks. Instead of whispering some beautiful Hawaiian welcome in his ear, she said in an extremely American accent, ‘Do you get this kinda shit everywhere you go?’ I think she ended up with Sam. Sam obviously gave her the same kind of shit he gave everywhere he went.
We stayed at a romantically situated hotel by Waikiki Beach. This was long before Hawaii became truly Americanized, and Waikiki Beach did not yet resemble Asbury Park, New Jersey. Rasa and I hadn’t been intimate since the baby was born. I thought I would make love to her in our hotel room overlooking the ocean. Everything seemed perfect: the soft sound of the sea, the sun shining through a thin gauze curtain, but Rasa turned away and there was no attempt to reciprocate my feelings. I tried to be understanding: Louisa’s birth had been difficult and Rasa’s body had been badly cut up. It was like she had been mauled by a butcher instead of giving birth to a child. Her stitches had hardly healed. Rasa was eighteen years old.
There were two concerts in Hawaii, one at Pearl Harbor for the servicemen. Surrounded as we were by what seemed to be the entire American armed forces, I was particularly careful not to make any comments about the Labour Government in England and how conservative America seemed in comparison. Then it was back to the mainland for two concerts in the north-west. While waiting in an airport coffee shop in Spokane, Washington, I kissed Rasa on the cheek and put my arm around her. Moments later two armed cops arrived to arrest me for ‘public indecency’. One of the waitresses had noticed the innocent peck on the cheek, but as she had already taken offence at my long hair, and perhaps because we seemed so young, she decided that my actions warranted police intervention. Either Dave or Mick – I can’t remember who – offered to drop his trousers so that the over-excited waitress could make a genuine complaint, but thanks to a timely intervention by Sam Levy we were able to leave on the designated flight.
This was virtually the end of the tour. Pete and Nicola stayed behind with Mick in LA. Rasa and I left for home. As the aeroplane took off, she squeezed my hand. I looked over to see that she was crying, but was unsure what this emotion was meant to represent. I felt for a moment that any love she had had for me had gone. Then I dismissed this, rationalizing that she was most probably relieved to be going back home to see her daughter. My fear of flying had not been cured, but the need for Valium had disappeared.
My thoughts were turning to anger because despite all the chaos and the screaming audiences that had followed us around America, I still felt uneasy about our management. The incidents involving the promoter in Nevada and California had still not been fully explained to anyone in the band. I had made further inquires about Larry, who was still missing, but the same old excuses were made by Sam. If they were taking care of business, they were doing it somewhere else and with other people. All this had turned me into a less innocent person than I had been before I arrived in America. ‘Nobody abandons the Kinks,’ I told Rasa as the plane took off for London.’
Raymond Douglas stopped suddenly. I watched as his face become that of a bitter old man. He sat back in his chair in the small control room and made the following declaration:
‘And as for America. God bless America. The place is great. The real Americans are fine people. But the undercurrent of corruption that I experienced on my first tour there never went away.’
The old rocker leaned forward and stared me in the eyes.
‘America gives. But whatever it gives, it takes back in one way or another, just like Dave’s guitar at San Francisco airport. And as sure as God is my judge, in America the Corporation is controlling you and they, whoever “they” are, still want to get me. Mark my words. They do not forget.’
Raymond Douglas moved back out of the light without changing his expression. His jaw was set tight and his eyes were filled with fear. He put on his favourite video, Charlie Varrick. Walter Matthau was echoing Raymond Douglas’ words almost verbatim. R.D. settled back into his chair and relaxed a little.
‘This is only a movie, and I suppose it’s not scary at all. It’s meant to be a comedy. Perhaps comedy is the only way to tell the truth. But believe me, there are guys out there who are for real. I like Charlie Varrick. It’s not a great movie like The Seven Samurai or Citizen Kane, but at least it’s a bit of fantasy. You know? When Varrick beats the mob? Nice fantasy. I like to believe it’s true sometimes, and that I might do it one day, but it’s not like that in real life. Believe me, kid. They have got you, and once you have given them what they want once, they will keep taking until they have your soul. If you decide you don’t want to give any more, they will undoubtedly dispose of you. They’re not just over there. They’re over here too.’
‘How come they haven’t disposed of you yet?’ I asked.
‘Because what I have frightens them.’
‘And what is that?’
R.D. smiled and shook his head with dismay and disappointment.
‘You know, I actually thought you were smart. Perhaps you are. Think about it. Just keep doing your job and see if I’m not right. Just keep asking questions and you might find out. You may not be as smart as I thought you were, but I still trust you.’
I asked some inconsequential questions about the remainder of the American tour, and then what happened when he returned to his beloved England.
‘When I got home, you mean? That’s better. Let’s stick to the story. Well, I’ll tell you. When I was a kid I used to run around the streets as part of my soccer training, and I passed a big white house set back from the road. When I returned to England I was amazed to find that this house was up for sale. It wasn’t as grand as I had remembered it as a child. In fact, it was quite a modest-looking semi. It did, however, have some historic value. It had been built around the time of the Battle of Trafalgar and had been ‘listed’ by the Department of National Heritage. I looked around and immediately told the people living there that I wanted to buy it. What was more, despite an earlier offer, they wanted to sell it to me. I said I’d pay the price they were asking as long as they included the furniture. The deal was done for £9,000, but there was a minor problem. Money.’